Green Peas at Stake

What is not said… ( Dew Drop 7 -April 7)

What is not said…

Auntie Em, at eighty-two, with damp
white hair and pale face, talks of
her life in ceaseless thirst: the bliss
of her childhood when she rode
in the rumble seat of Model A Ford;
the hands of a pianist, her first
love; how she fell into marriage like
a meek doppelganger with icy eyes;
how she gathered sea shells and
kelp from the sea foam on sand
on her wedding day; the child that
never was; her immigrant neighbor’s
swearing like an anarchist in rage;
her husband’s ashes in the urn
one day she’ll throw in the sea
as she promised him, just not yet.

Auntie Em talks of the town council,
Orchard Drive’s traffic, old fashions,
pinwheels, her barmaid sister-in-law,
her cane, bean soup and prophecies,
crabapple trees, caraway seeds,
pineapple upside-down cakes, tarts,
éclairs, weather vanes, night sweats,
rheumatoid arthritis, backaches, but
she never talks of the cancer,
gnawing her within, gruesome, aslant,
and in between her voice
and my nodding, what is not said
encrypts itself into how similar we are,
in holding back our shivering
inside word clouds, as if
paying homage to life.